An Unwelcome Passenger
by Iulia
Summary: The Uchiha Family gets an uninvited and unwelcome passenger in their car
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes: **The Uchiha Family gets an uninvited and unwelcome passenger during one of their trips. :D

**Disclaimer: **Naruto belongs to Kishimoto.

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**An Unwelcome Passenger**

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He knew this man.

The moment he had seen the name 'Uchiha' on his list earlier today, he had felt a twinge of familiarity, a stirring of musty twenty-year old memories.

Twenty years – normally, he would have forgotten incidents that had transpired so long ago. But the nature of that particular event had prevented it, made it impossible for him to forget. The memory of a dull-eyed eight-year old boy standing in a sea of corpses, all of them his own kin, stubbornly engraved itself onto his mind, a reminder of the sometimes gruesome, cruel character of his line of work.

He had wondered, then, if the boy would ever recover, find a life for himself, or if the boy would be one of those who jumped ahead, refusing to wait for his predestined time. At first, he was pretty sure that it would be the latter. But then, when he saw the two names on his list: Uchiha Sakura and Uchiha Takumi, he was pretty glad to know that the boy had moved on, forged a life for himself despite all the odds. And then realization sunk in, and he wished that the boy had not bothered in the first place. Looking at Uchiha Sasuke now, through the closed, tinted window of a practical Toyota, made him wish that the world had just a little bit more justice. It was unfair that one man lose so much at such a young age, whereas others have yet to experience a single tragedy, spared from it until such a time when they would be mature enough to handle it.

But life was cruel, and nobody knew it more than he did. Things like justice and fairness were merely myths.

Humans, however, were resilient; they just kept on going, fighting for survival, happiness, even though they had a pretty certain notion of what awaited them at the very end. Uchiha Sasuke was a perfect example of that, building a family despite the fact that he already knew firsthand how fragile families were, how breakable, how destroyable.

He would never understand them. Then again, he never had to.

This was just his job, his duty, and he had long since abandoned any attempts to rationalize and moralize it.

But cases like this— cases like Uchiha Sasuke, well, they just tested his limits, made him want to run the other way, escape. But he knew that wishing so was as futile as it was foolish. He was trapped in his fate, and so was Uchiha Sasuke. There was nothing that they could do about that.

With a tired sigh, he adjusted his glasses, wiped his sweaty palms on his black suit, and perched atop Uchiha Sasuke's car. He could hear some light-hearted conversation from below him, a cheery banter between husband and wife. It warmed him to know that the boy had really found happiness despite everything, but the warmth was immediately replaced by the tell-tale chill that came with the job on hand.

'Oh well, best get it over with', he thought as he pressed his palm on the heated roof.

The car swerved, once, twice, but it could not shake the uninvited passenger off. Stubbornly, he clung to it until all he heard was the clash of metal against metal and all he could smell was the acrid stench of burning tires. Black, billowing smoke engulfed him as he descended from his perch to peek inside the car. The child, he knew, was dead, his head bent at an odd angle. But the woman – pink hair now matted with blood – was just unconscious, still alive but barely. He noted with distaste how she was not wearing a seatbelt, a simple but grave matter that was very easy to overlook. She still had a few hours left, according to his record. Perhaps she might even reach the hospital, injecting her husband with such futile, painful, cruel hope, but ultimately, she too would have to go.

Dread pitting in his nonexistent stomach, he turned his attention to Uchiha Sasuke. The boy – technically a man by human standards, but still a child to his – was coughing and sputtering as he rolled down the windows, letting more smoke out. Then, almost immediately, the boy turned to his wife and child, checking to make sure if they were okay. He saw panic rise in the boy's face as he saw the state of his family, his breathing becoming more frantic.

Still, he was impressed by how efficient the boy's movements were despite the recent events. Within seconds, the boy was out of the car and on the other side, ripping open the crushed door and pulling his family out into safety. The boy's actions were in vain, he knew, and marked by hysterics. Still, they were well-organized and economical – the marks of a man who would have gone far had life not deemed it proper to pull the rug from out under him at each turn.

He watched as the boy flipped his phone open with shaking hands, frantically dialing the emergency number. That done, the boy rocked back and forth, clutching his family in his hands, shuddering sobs wracking his body.

Death turned away then, unable to take another minute of watching the boy break, wishing more than anything else that he could retire, that this responsibility wasn't his. He then floated to the other car which, he saw, was driven by a boy who looked as if he was barely out of his teens. The boy was unconscious as well, but he would survive, maybe even learn a vital lesson from this. Uchiha Sasuke, however, would walk away with nothing. Life had dealt him too many blows, too many tragedies for them to still be called 'lessons'.

The sound of sirens broke into his reverie, and he watched dispassionately as the woman and child were wrenched from Uchiha Sasuke's grasp and lifted into the ambulance. The boy, as soon as he was calmed by the paramedics, followed his family into the vehicle, heedless of anything important he might leave in his car.

That simple display showed where the boy's priorities lay, and Death could not help but pity him more.

Because, really, how often can a man say that he lost everything twice?

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**tbc.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes: **Hi, hi! At first I thought this would be a multi-chaptered fic, though it worked well as a oneshot too. This was, indeed, brought on by "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak, particularly, its first chapter. I downloaded an audiobook then realized that it was so wonderfully awesome that I had to have my own copy. Sadly, I couldn't find one at that time, and in my heartbreak, I wrote the first chapter. XD I wanted to make this a multi-chaptered fic so that I could be, well, 'sustained' until such a time that I found that book. But I just recently found the book in our local bookstore last week in a weird stroke of incredibly good luck, so, er, I decided to put an end to this story. XD So, it's now a… a two-shot! XD Is there even such a thing? Ah, whatever. Anyway, hope you guys like this. Please R&R. ^^

**Disclaimer: **Naruto belongs to Kishimoto.

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**An Unwelcome Passenger

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It was probably a bad idea, and yet he still found himself following the boy into the ambulance. He figured the boy would need some company, now more than ever.

Then again, nobody in their right mind would ever think that Death would be 'good company', and he was pretty sure Uchiha Sasuke wouldn't either.

In fact, the boy probably held some sort of grudge towards him now, never mind that he was just doing his job.

People were weird like that; they always needed someone to blame.

Still, he would do it for himself, if not for Uchiha Sasuke's sake. Even if he was not at fault, he felt particularly guilty; like a spectator to a train wreck, powerless to help, but hoping that he could somehow do something, _anything_.

Carefully, he sat beside the boy, making sure that they didn't touch, lest the boy feel a draft and somehow suspect – well, that was a bit farfetched, wasn't it? For all he knew, the boy might not even believe in such things as Grim Reapers or Angels of Death. But no – that wasn't right. From the boy's position – hands clasped, head bent down, almost leaning over completely, unintelligible words spewing from his mouth, – he could tell that the boy was praying. The word 'God' was definitely thrown in somewhere in there, so either the boy truly believed in a supreme being or he was just being desperate.

He knew he should depart, leave the boy on his own, but he couldn't. It was never good to be behind schedule, especially in his line of work – something about prolonging the agony of the dying – but somehow, right now, he felt like he could afford this, if only just for this one time.

To his right, the boy was still mumbling, praying, and it looked like he wouldn't stop any time soon. Too bad his prayers would not be answered. This was a beef he actually had with the Big Guy up There. If everything was predestined, written in that obscenely humongous "Book of Life" of His, then why teach people to pray in the first place? Why inject them with the false hope that an all-powerful Deity would somehow swoop down and fix things for them? It was cruel, too cruel.

Then again, who knew what went on in His mind? Perhaps there was a purpose in all _this_ – perhaps.

Perhaps.

He certainly hoped so – for the sake of all those he ferried and all those that they left behind… for the sake of Uchiha Sasuke, whose prayers were now replaced with unabashed sobbing, punctuated by the steadily decreasing sound of the machine's (the heart of the boy's wife, her heart, oh, her heart) all important 'beeps' and the agonized wail of the ambulance siren.

Death was assaulted by a myriad of stimuli, all of them unpleasant – the calculated speed and the jerky swerving of the ambulance, the metallic smell of the girl's blood, the grotesque sight of the little boy's bent neck, and the depressing sound of Uchiha Sasuke's tragedy, his heart breaking for the second time around.

Suddenly, uncontrollably, he felt his anger rise at the unfairness of it all. He wanted out. He wanted to get out of the confined spaces of the ambulance, primarily. But most of all, he wanted to be out of work.

With an uncharacteristically rough jerk, he prematurely siphoned the girl's soul out of her body (there was no way he was returning later, no way he would be forced to look at Uchiha Sasuke again, at least not any time soon – damn his schedule and damn that Book) and made his way out of the vehicle, trying his best to ignore the piercing wail that followed in his wake.

Was there any meaning to this? Was there, really?

Perhaps there was – But could 'perhaps' really cut it? Was 'perhaps' enough to justify Uchiha Sasuke's suffering?

No—no. 'Perhaps' would never be enough. _Never_.

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**End.**


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